I ran the Great Bay half marathon yesterday; my first road race of this distance in probably 20 or so years. Yes, I did longer trail Ultra events last year but they involved a lot of walking. This race was a long run which I used as a training run for upcoming events.

I ran this with a friend, Dean, and we finished together in 2:24 at about 11 minutes per mile. I probably had another 15-20 minutes of speed in me and finished feeling pretty good; I did an hour elevation workout to supplement at night on the treadmill.

Inspiring, you question? I wasn’t the one with the inspiring effort. On December 8 I was talking to Dean and he mentioned he was trying to make a healthy life change with proper diet and exercise. I mentioned the Ultra’s I had participated in and he decided then to start training, with the ultimate goal of a 50k at The Oil Creek Trail Runs in October.

Of course this received an interesting reaction from some of the people who we` were with but we talked a little about training and he began. The short story is from December 8 to April 3 Dean has lost 70 pounds, STARTED to train (including running and walking) and ran every step of yesterday’s half marathon. A tough road half with non-stop rolling hills. All in 4 months and from a base of zero.

He tells me that I help inspire him to do what he is doing; I can only shake my head. I am inspired by his effort and I am disgusted about the petty whining I do when I have sore muscles or can’t train as much as I want due to my recurring leg issues. This dude just goes out and does it. Inspiring to me………

On a second note I purchased a Garmin Forerunner 205 GPS enabled watch. Not so much for road runs but for trail runs and tracking elevation gain. After uploading the results last night it read that the half marathon was 13.3 miles- I guess it could be the other .2 was from not running the race at its shortest route the whole way. The ascent for the race was 500 feet- I have no way of validating that accuracy yet but will use it on an elevation confirmed route soon. It’s a little large but I can get over that. I love the mapping features after uploading the data. For 117 dollars I am happy after one use and hope it will be very handy on untracked trail runs…..

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About Tuco

After years of only hiking due to running injuries I found out that I could participate in Ultra events. At age 47 in 2010, I competed and completed my first event. Living in NH, there are tons of opportunities to take advantage of the outdoors and this is my new passion......hopefully one day I can do it well.